Marek Isalski, Entropy Source
Camera Lenses
I bought my first camera, a Canon EOS 300 35mm film body, back in 1998 along with a 28-80mm f/4-5.6 lens and 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II lens. These are both “consumer grade” lenses which came as part of a kit, but they fared me very well for a good number of years. It’s only as my photography has become more ambitious that they’ve struggled to keep up, something you really notice if you “pixel peep” at the raw images, but it’s also been apparent from the lower contrast these lenses provide at high zoom. Here are some example images that I’m very proud of but where the equipment is starting to let me down:
Recently I decided to upgrade my camera from the 350D back that I’ve used for the last six years — a camera which has served me well taking about 200000 pictures in that time — and the increased resolutions of the cameras available today made my decision simple enough. While a full-format sensor of the 5D Mark II was desirable, it would make far more sense for me to get the cheaper 7D and invest the difference in better lenses. I bought my new camera with a second hand nifty fifty (50mm f/1.8 II) lens, tried them out at the Frontierpunk photoshoot and subsequently took them to Infest and Edinburgh. I’d not owned a prime lens before, having only had 35mm and 50mm primes on an old camera my parents let me use as a child, and this brought some novelty with it, something slightly “retro” while being quite new and the f/1.8 aperture giving me some new possibilities, especially for video. And so I began to research lenses…
Two hugely useful websites I found were Photozone.de’s EOS APS-C Lens Tests and The-Digital-Picture.com’s ISO12233 Chart 100% Crops. Armed with a more scientific approach to lens comparison, I decided that the two lenses which would replace my newer 15-55, old 28-80 and old 75-300 would be:
Both of these lenses show better optical characteristics than my older lenses, have optical image stabilisation, and the Sigma goes down to f/2.8 which is an aperture I’ve not had access to but with prime lenses. The lenses arrive today…